Juneau Public Library Book Blog

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Well, didn’t make it all the way through this one as we were listening to it on audio book on a road trip and whenever I’m not driving I tend to nod off, but this is in no way due to the content of this amazing story. Bouncing back and forth between New York/New Jersey, The Dominican Republic and Cuba, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao tells the story of overweight, uncertain, suicidal Oscar, whose sex life peaks at age 8 as well as the stories of his sister, his mother and two more generations whose paths have been adversely affected by a “fuku” a bad juju curse dating back to the dictatorship of “El Jefe” Rafael Trujillo.

The narration is fresh and in your face, ripe with plenty of gory details of torture and brutality, so if language or violence offends you, this story won’t suit you, but these instances are necessary in depicting an era in Dominican history considered the bloodiest dictatorship of the 20th century.

Juneau Teens participating in the Metamorphosis Summer Reading Program have been busy writing reviews of their summer favorites. Here are a few for those young readers who just can’t find anything good to read this summer.

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The Titans Curse by Rick Riordan. Atlas, the ancient Greek Titan, escapes from holding up the sky and leads a revolution of monsters against the Olympians. Percy Jackson, our modern day Greek hero, stops him by tricking him into going back to holding up the sky. It wasn’t quite as good as “The Lightning Thief.”

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With Their Eyes September 11th–The View from a High School at Ground Zero by Annie Thoms. September 11th, 2001. People say it’s a day they’ll never forget, but how often do you really THINK about it? Not as much as these teens are forced to, after witnessing firsthand the terrorist attacks, just a few days into the school year. These are the monologues of Stuyvesant High School.

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Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by Steig, William. A donkey was in the rain. He wanted to go. Hey! It stopped raining! Then it starts raining. The thunder goes, “Boom! Boom! Boom!” Then it stopped and a lion went, “Raaaarrrhh!” The donkey is a rock. He was not there. They could not find him. The donkey is still a rock. Then he turned into a donkey. They are happy and go to sleep.

Check back in later in the week for more Metamorphosis reviews….

Today and Today, Haiku by Issa, pictures by G. Brian Karas. Karas’ colorful, mixed media (paint, pencil and rice paper) pictures of cherry blossoms, children flying kites and a father with his sons watching dew dance by dawn’s light, visually capture the simple natural beauty which 18^th century Japanese poet, Kobatashi Issa sought in his haiku. Organized by season, the poems and pictures follow a family through the course of a year of great change. Beginning and ending with Spring, the poems selected here illustrate the circle of life, new life emerging from death. Issa saw the world from a microscopic perspective, measuring time and the arrival of seasons by the cicada’s song and the chrysanthemums’ bloom, autumn moons and field wren tracks in Winter’s first snow. You too will be soothed by the calming song of Issa’s haiku, so gentle, like falling cherry blossoms or snow flakes caught on the wind, refusing to fall.

Reviewed by Jonas